Still standing: A Fort Mill man with lung cancer is asking U.S. senators to help others
Mike Smith was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer five years ago. Now, Smith is living with lung cancer — he’s “thriving,” he says.
And on Wednesday, he’s speaking with South Carolina’s U.S. senators Lindsey Graham, Tim Scott, and Rep. Ralph Norman, on behalf of others like him.
Smith, 55, and a Fort Mill, S.C., resident, will meet virtually to tell his story as part of the American Lung Association’s LUNG FORCE Advocacy Day.
He will join the organization in asking lawmakers to ensure that everyone has affordable, adequate and accessible healthcare, support $10 billion in funding for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and support $46.1 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health for lung cancer research.
Smith wants lawmakers to know what happened to him could happen to anyone.
And if it does, he wants there to be treatment options available.
“I’m very fortunate enough that I’ve got a good employer and a good health care plan, but if you do not have a good health care plan, it can get very expensive, or people defer or decline to get treatment,” Smith said.
He’s managed his cancer with targeted therapy drugs, which are a recent development in cancer treatment.
“Research drives more solutions, things that help facilitate stories similar to mine,” he said earlier this week. “I’m living with lung cancer, but I’m actually thriving. I still have lung cancer, but it’s not growing, it’s stable.”
Smith said he remembers his own diagnosis. At the time, when he looked up the survival rate for his disease, it was 18%.
Today, studies show that number has increased to 22%. New research brings more hope all the time, Smith says, and he wants that to continue.
He said he wants others to have hope, and know new treatments are coming -- to have a better experience than he did.
He had been trying to figure out why he was struggling to breathe for the past seven months, but he never expected lung cancer. He had never been a smoker.
“It was a gut punch,” he said. “I don’t know why I got lung cancer. I may never know.”
He went home to his wife and his children, who were five, eight and 10 at the time.
“The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was have that conversation,” he said. “They don’t really understand, but they saw it on our faces. They felt it. They just started crying.”
That night, his family slept in sleeping bags in one room. “I’m not dying today,” he remembers telling them.
In the morning, when they woke up together, he told his family: “We’re all still here.”
Smith decided this would be his attitude. He would fight every day.
The past five years have not been easy. Smith has undergone radiation, a craniotomy to remove a brain tumor and has had three targeted therapies to treat his lung cancer.
The treatment is ongoing, but he lives a normal, active life, he says. He goes to the gym five days a week.
“I’m just enjoying what life has to offer,” he says.
He said he enjoys the simple things — going to his son’s football games, his daughter’s volleyball games and teaching his oldest daughter to drive.
“If I can get five,” he says, “I can get 10.”
This story was originally published March 17, 2021 at 12:05 PM.
